What problem did Sarah O'Reilly identify with traditional reward charts?
Reward charts are used by around 65% of parents — but they almost universally stop working after just four to five weeks. Sarah O'Reilly identifies a precise, structural flaw at the heart of the problem: if the tangible reward is not available immediately at the moment the child completes the task, the motivational effect disappears entirely. The gap between action and reward breaks the reinforcement loop before it has a chance to build lasting habits.
This is not simply a matter of parental consistency or child willpower. The issue is timing. Children — especially young children — cannot bridge the psychological distance between a completed behaviour and a reward that arrives later. When that immediacy is lost, so is the incentive to repeat the behaviour. The chart becomes wallpaper. O'Reilly's diagnosis helps explain why 70% of parents who use reward systems do observe early improvements in their child's behaviour, yet the system still collapses within weeks: the early wins depend on the novelty and immediacy of the reward, and once either of those factors weakens, the system fails.
It is precisely this gap that O'Reilly set out to close when developing Be Me, her child reward solution, which she is bringing to market via a Kickstarter campaign with an estimated delivery window of nine to twelve months after funding. The full conversation — including her thinking on early childhood development and the emotional stakes behind the product — is available on The Purpose People Podcast.
"90% of a child's behavioral profile is built by age 5, so those early years are really important — whether that starts with a small task like brushing your teeth, making your bed, that is building the life skills and the foundations for the person you're going to become."
— Sarah O'Reilly, Founder, Be Me · The Purpose People Podcast, Ep. 187
Sarah O'Reilly
Founder · Be Me
Sarah O'Reilly grew up around two parents running their own businesses, which gave her an early, unvarnished view of what entrepreneurship actually demands. At 21, she launched her first venture — an events company in Bristol, organising ladies' nights and themed parties under the name Glam Events. After relocating to Oxford to support her partner's career, she spent a period feeling professionally stalled before rediscovering her direction, a turning point she places around age 32–34.
What ultimately gave shape to her purpose was her experience as a mother of four children in a blended, co-parenting family. Her eldest son Ralph faced sensory and emotional difficulties, and working through those challenges — including encounters with ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) support structures in schools — made the inadequacy of existing child reward tools viscerally clear to her. She noticed firsthand how quickly reward charts lose their effect, and how the timing of reward delivery is the deciding factor. That observation became the founding insight behind Be Me, a product designed to address exactly that structural flaw in how parents try to reinforce positive behaviour.